SCIENCE

From teleradiology to electronic patient records and HIPAA-mandated privacy and security compliance, the deployment and management of healthcare networks can create a variety of challenges for today's healthcare providers. Modern healthcare networks demand a higher class of technology solution, which is why many healthcare providers are choosing Brocade solutions when refreshing or building their networks.

Two such healthcare providers, Community Hospital of Long Beach and University of Utah Health Care, have deployed reliable, high-performance Brocade-based networks that are delivering compelling ROI and strategic business advantages.

Community Hospital of Long Beach

Often referred to as "The Miracle on Termino Avenue" by both its staff and the patients it serves, Community Hospital of Long Beach (CHLB), treats approximately 25,000 patients in its emergency room each year and admits approximately 4000 patients. The wide variety of services and rapid rate of treatment necessitate a reliable, highly secure, flexible and scalable network infrastructure. As both its capabilities and requirements have increased over the past few years, the hospital realized that its legacy network couldn't keep up with the demand.

"We're very much a high-touch healthcare organization, and we are bringing high tech to high-touch healthcare," said Robert J. Klingseis, director of information services and information technology for CHLB. "We had infrastructure initiatives for server consolidation, and for implementing a new PACS imaging system for physicians. Our existing infrastructure did not have the required capacity, so we looked to Brocade to refresh our network."

In addition to advanced applications, the hospital also needed extensive wireless support for several groups and systems, including mobile carts in the ER known as "workstations on wheels" or "WOWs." These carts are used for everything from admissions to surgery, giving surgeons crucial patient information and radiology images at their fingertips.

The hospital has deployed Brocade FastIron Series switches for high availability at the network core, with additional FastIron Series switches deployed campus-wide for high capacity and high availability.

"Critically, we felt that the Brocade account support, from a sales and implementation point of view, was stronger than what we had experienced with other companies," said Klingseis. "The technology was easily as good or better, and the overall sales and service support was superior. It was an easy decision to make."

University of Utah Health Care

With approximately 750 terabytes of disk storage and tiered storage supporting approximately 30,800 students across the entire campus, the University of Utah Health Care has adopted Brocade storage area network (SAN) solutions to transport and protect its business-critical data, highly regulated patient records and other crucial operational data.

The University of Utah Health Care IT department first deployed Brocade switches to support its SAN in 2004, and was pleased with the results. After several years the IT team required higher performance and resiliency to support growing demands. When the time came to upgrade the switches to director-class offerings, the university deployed Brocade DCX Backbones and plans to expand on that deployment as requirements increase.

"When it came down to purchasing a new environment, we focused on the reliability of the Brocade switches," said John Fagg, manager of storage service for the university. "We've never had any issues with the Brocade switches, so we're staying with the company that has kept us up for the last six-plus years."

Recent network improvements and expansion projects supported by the Brocade DCX Backbones include development of a data replication (DR) site approximately 150 miles south of the main data center, the new Mariott Library and, soon, the launch of a completely new data center in downtown Salt Lake City. The team plans to leverage not only the unparalleled stability and 8 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) throughput that the Brocade DCX enables, but also plans to utilize data encryption blades to increase overall security.